un-Unicorn Pastel Rainbow Cake

When discussing the design of this cake with the birthday girl's mummy, a unicorn cake kept popping into my mind. She wanted the rainbow buttercream swirls all over the the top of the cake. She wanted a trailing mane on the side of the cake. She wanted rainbow buttercream swirls all over the bottom tier of the cake. But, no horn, eyes and ears! Ok so, here we have an un-Unicorn pastel rainbow cake! Haha. 

Pastel Rainbow Cake

The top tier of the cake was red velvet cake filled with lemon cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream. The bottom tier was decadent devil's food cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache. 

buttercream rainbow rosette wall

The bottom tier of the cake was decorated with rows of buttercream rosettes, piped with the universal 1M piping nozzle. Colouring the buttercream six pastel shades of the rainbow was fun, and luckily I have enough nozzles to not have to wash in between colours!

pastel rainbow fondant letters

Now for the top tier, I iced it smooth in an off-white buttercream, making sure to place parchment paper underneath before decorating it, so that the bottom edge would be nice and smooth later on when I would have to take the cake of off the board and place it on top of the bottom tier. I put in support dowels on the bottom 9" tier before stacking the 6" cake on top.

cute swirls on top of the cake

Then I mixed pastel red, blue and purple buttercream in a piping bag using the cling film method, and piped on buttercream rose swirls on the top and on one side of the cake, trailing down to the bottom tier. For the other colours, I placed them in piping bags fitted with smaller open star tips and randomly piped stars and rosettes to cover the top of the cake and trailing down one side. At this point I really itched to add eyes, a horn and ears, but I had to keep reminding myself that this was not a unicorn cake!

rainbow roses trailing down the side of the cake

To finish off the cake, I added the birthday girl's name in matching pastel rainbow fondant, on the front face of the top tier. Really loving the overall look!!

all rainbow!

boxed up and ready for transport

I also got to make some lemon cupcakes frosted with pastel rainbow buttercream swirls to go along with the cake. 

rainbow swirl-frosted lemon cupcakes

Delivery had me stuck in the basement of a condo for a good 20 mins while the mummy tried to figure out how to let me up to the clubhouse function room without a key card. And this was not a light cake to be holding for that long! Anyway, we figured it out eventually, and here's a pic of the cake at the venue :) Happy 1st Birthday, Leanne!

Happy 1st Birthday, Leanne!